


Lost Fight

by Naomida



Series: The Amazing(ly shitty) Spiderman [12]
Category: Fantastic Four, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Twins, Escape, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, NOT ONE GRAPHIC THING, Original Character(s), Rescue, nothing graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 13:20:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11253789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naomida/pseuds/Naomida
Summary: Hilly did not bleed out and die, and she was resentful for that.





	Lost Fight

Hilly did _not_ bleed out before they landed.

In fact, she didn’t bleed out as they landed, or when they moved her, or even what seemed like a week later, when they finally let her have a sip of water and some sort of food.

They did not let her bleed out and die, and she was resentful for that.

  


  


***

  


  


If she closed her eyed and concentrated enough, she could see Peter, Aunt May and Uncle Ben. She could see their smiles, the spark of joy in their eyes, she could smell pancakes in the morning, and Ben’s coffee that May found disgusting but still brew because it made him happy. She could almost feel Peter, sitting next to her, his lens not on yet so he had to squint in order to be able to watch Sponge Bob on the tiny screen of the kitchen TV. She could hear May ask her to take the car to the garage after school, because she didn’t trust Peter to drive and Ben and her would still be at work.

It should have made her cry, because she knew that even if she got out alive, none of this would be waiting for her. Uncle Ben was dead, Peter hated her and she had no idea where Aunt May stood. She hoped that someone had told her aunt that she had been kidnapped. She hoped no one had told her about the rest.

Instead of making her cry, it gave her strength. She’d fight to the end to make it out alive, and if she died, then she’d take out as many with her as she could. Because she owed her family that. She owed the old Hilly, the one with dreams and long hair and a good life.

She owed her that. So she closed her eyes, and concentrated hard enough to see her family.

It didn’t make the pain go away – what could? – but it made it just a tiny little bit more bearable. They were practically skinning her alive at this point and she had lost count of the days a long time ago, but for her family, she would get through this.

“Still don’t wanna tell us?” asked the guy in front of her.

He had a gun trailed on her, an empty threat seeing as she was the only one who knew where the USB drive they wanted was. The constant sun had burnt the skin of his nose. He had been there ever since she had woken up inside a truck, a month earlier or maybe more – they moved her around _a lot_ – and he was the only one asking the questions.

He didn’t look like he should be in charge though, which made her wonder about what was happening everywhere else. How was the world taking the news about Hydra?

Was anyone looking for her?

The man behind her waited a full minute after the question was asked before digging into the flesh of her back. It made her wince in pain, and she closed her eyes again.

Ben, May, Peter. Ben, May, Peter. Ben, May, Peter.

She mentally sung it like a mantra, ignoring the next question and pretending that the pain they were inflicting her wasn’t as excruciating as it really was.

By the time they were finished for the day, the sun was already set and she laid on her right side, her cheek touching the dusty ground. She was panting in pain – had been for hours now – and she tried to get her handcuffs off while the five men camping with her in the middle of the desert sat around a fire and started eating their diner in comfortable chitchat.

They hadn’t even bothered with handcuffs capable to stop a superpowered person, they all knew she was too weak at this point, and what was the use anyway, since she couldn’t even walk? She tried not to think about it, but the pain in her left leg was a constant weight pulling down on her sanity, making her sob hysterically in the middle of the night and scream in pain louder than anything else they had ever done to her. It looked better than it had when they had done it to her, but still, she couldn’t make herself look down at the limb or think about it.

Still, it was an advantage that she wouldn’t pass on. While she was weak and literally couldn’t get up to save her life, she still wasn’t _just_ a regular person. Her spider-sense and reflexes were almost as sharp as ever, and while she pretended to be weaker than she truly was, she knew that once she got into action, she’d have at least a minute or two to do damage before either being taken out or making sure they wouldn’t be able to get their hands on her again.

It was sinister, to consider suicide as her other option against being killed, but it comforted her, to know that if things really got bad enough for her to go berserk, she’d make that final choice for herself.

She didn’t sleep that night, preferring to think on a plan, and wasn’t surprised when the next morning they started moving her again.

  


  


***

  


  


The compound they had brought her in was bustling with Hydra scums everywhere. She was shocked, however, to come face to face with a very familiar face during her morning torture session.

The man with the skin peeling off his nose was still here, along with half a dozen of heavily armed guys, and Derek Lawson.

He met her gaze with unflinching eyes even as they tortured her and, once it was over, he was the one who forced her to her feet and pushed her to the tiny cell they kept her in, not even commenting every time she almost passed out because she put her weight on her left leg.

The only thing, really, that put Hilly to ease and confirmed that she still had a very tiny chance to survive, was the fact that he very gently squeezed her arms before pushing her into her cell without ceremony and harshly closing the door behind her.

She fell to the ground hard enough to make her teeth rattle and just laid there, eyes closed and breathing labored but feeling lighter than she had in a while knowing that someone on her side was _finally_ here.

  


  


***

  


  


Although she couldn’t exactly be sure, it had to be at least two more weeks before Hilly finally got what she wanted.

It started with people walking down the hallway, in front of her cell and continuing on. At first it was only small groups of three to five people, but after a while it seemed like the entire compound was going to run past her cell. That had her sit up and wait anxiously.

Derek shot the two men guarding her about ten minutes later, entered her cell without a word and knelt down in front of her. He offered her a tiny reassuring smile right before stabbing her in the left thigh.

Gaping in surprised, Hilly blinked down at the syringe sticking out of her leg and waited for one, two heartbeats, before the adrenaline reached her heart and was pumped through her veins.

She violently jerked back, flexing her arms to break her restraint and, without even realizing that she was moving, she had broken the necks of two guys running past her cell and was punching a third one who fell back flat on his back, unconscious.

“It’s a highly experimental drug, you have about twenty minutes before it wears off, maybe less if you have a heart attack,” said Derek, following her as they made their way through the long hallways of the compound, to what she assumed was the closest exit, Hilly taking everyone they met out before they could even blink or before she was even aware of what she was doing. She couldn’t even feel the pain in her leg anymore. “You need to drive East, there’s a SHIELD team waiting for you in about seventy kilometers.”

“You aren’t coming with me?” she asked, taking care of the last guard standing between her and the exit door.

She teared the door off its hinges when opening it and was glad to find a car with its engine already purring with life just on the other side, as if waiting for her. She teared the car’s door off too when trying to open it and threw herself on the driver’s seat, every limb shaking and cold sweat starting to drip down her back and forehead.

“I’m pretty sure you killed every single guard you punched,” he said, watching the way she curled her fingers around the steering wheel and made huge dents in it, “and I’m too deep in cover to pull off like that. All the info that I get by being here is too valuable,” he added when she tried to argue, taking a step closer and squeezing her shoulder. “You’re going to be fine as long as you always drive East without ever looking back or stopping, you understand? What you’ve done so far is _so_ courageous, Parker. I’m proud of you.”

She nodded, eyes tearing up without her even knowing why, and watched with apprehension as Derek let go of her shoulder and took a step back.

“I know I need to knock you out,” she said, voice trembling, “but I can’t really control my strength right now.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, trying for a reassuring smile as she bit down on her lower lip so hard that she tasted blood, “that wouldn’t be my first concussion.”

Nodding again, Hilly turned so she was fully facing him and, without giving herself time to thing about it, she sucker punched him and watched him fall with a heavy thump.

Shaking like a leaf and starting to feel nauseous, she turned back to the steering wheel, tried to ignore the way her right eye was twitching and pressed down so hard on the accelerator that the car jumped a little before starting to go, leaving the compound behind her as she squinted at the sun standing proud and shiny in the sky in front of her and tried to keep herself from breaking anything with the way she was violently shaking.

  


  


***

  


  


The desert was grim and empty all around her, the compound nowhere in sight in her rear view mirror – which had her doubt that she was going in the right direction because surely seventy kilometers couldn’t be _that_ far.

The drug was wearing off, and she was pretty sure it had been far more than twenty minutes – or maybe not. Her heart was beating so hard and loud inside her head, she couldn’t really think about anything. The only thing she could really register, actually, was the growing and breath-stealing pain in her left leg. If her eyes hadn’t already been teary, she would have probably started to cry from it. As it was, Hilly couldn’t really tell whether she was sobbing uncontrollably or just hyperventilating, but her chest was moving rapidly and she was breathing hard, and _the damn drug was wearing off_.

Her eyes blinked in and out of focus at rhythmical intervals and her teeth were weirdly chattering, but she forced herself to swallow down each wave of nausea and press down on the damned accelerator, making sure to still be going East, wondering what would happen now.

A new wave of nausea arrived before she could ponder on it and this one was strong enough that Hilly didn’t have a choice but brusquely stop the car, almost falling out of it in the process, and lean over the side of it to thrown up bile and dry-heave for a few minutes, her sight growing blurrier by the seconds.

Once she was pretty sure it wouldn’t get worse she sat back fully in the car, put both of her feet on the accelerator and pressed down on it with as much strength as she could muster – which wasn’t a lot, compared to what she had been using only minutes before.

She hadn’t come this far only to die like an idiot in a car in the middle of nowhere. Derek had risked a lot to get her out, so she had to _at least_ pay him back by surviving and meeting up with this team of his. Still, that didn’t make her feel any better. In fact, she felt so bad that after only a few meters she didn’t have any strength in her body to keep the accelerator down, and the car came to a stop once again, at which point she tried to move her left leg and passed out unceremoniously on the steering wheel.

  


  


***

  


  


Hilly woke up to a very sharp pain in her ribs. She blinked up, surprised and gasping for air, and came face to face with what looked like a masked doctor.

“Heartbeat is back and she’s conscious!” he practically yelled, barely spearing a glance down at her face before he was concentrating on something near her feet. “I need more morphine and Dani for the love of God do something about the dehydration or we’re gonna lose her.”

Confused and frightened she tried to speak and found herself incapable of doing so. When she reached up to touch her face, she realized that there was a tube in her mouth that wouldn’t move when she tugged at it.

A gloved hand pushed hers away before the doctor was back to yelling “Someone sedate her!” and something sharp was stabbing her in the shoulder.

Her eyes closed on their own accord just as the same doctor was swearing and screaming about flat-line and something was pressing down on her ribs again.

  


  


***

  


  


The second time she woke up, she was surrounded by darkness and the bed she was laying on was gently moving, up and down and up and down at regular intervals. The tube in her mouth was gone but she could feel three different needles in her arms along with a dull pain all over her body.

She was surprised she could still feel something, and wondered for a second if Hydra had managed to get her despite Derek’s attempt at an escape.

“She’s awake,” murmured someone to her right and she turned her head in that direction when she heard the distinct sound of someone moving around.

“Hilly?” asked a second person, a warm hand wrapping around hers.

She blinked up, seeing nothing but blurred blue eyes. They looked gentle, and she thought she knew them, but she couldn’t be sure.

“Hilly, can you hear me?” asked the person again, a second hand touching Hilly’s forehead and gently pushing her hair back.

She blinked again, the eyes growing blurrier by the second. She wanted to speak, ask the person who they were and where the hell she was, but she just managed to open her mouth and let a hoarse croak out.

Immediately the hands were gone and something was gently being pressed against her lips. She opened them and drank the water she was given, choking around the straw after only two sips. She tried to protest when the water was taken away, but it just sounded like a very quiet whine and the hands were back where they had previously been.

“Don’t worry Hilly, it’s gonna be okay. We’re taking you home.”

She tried to ask what they meant by that, but her eyes refused to open again when she blinked and exhaustion washed over her before she could try to fight it.

  


  


***

  


  


The third time, she was in a dimly lit hospital room, there was an IV drip inside her right arm and her whole body was hurting so much, she could barely breathe through it.

There was a heart monitor on her left finger that she got rid of as soon as she found the right button to get her bed up so she was sitting and, breathing shallowly through her teeth, she managed to swing her legs over the side of the bed and slid down to her right foot, her knee buckling.

She grabbed the IV pole with all the strength she could muster and half-dragged half hopped on her foot to the window, groaning in pain every time her left leg was jostled, and clung to the window sill as soon as she was close enough, peaking outside.

Her heart skipped a beat as she looked down at New York spread out in front of her eyes, its skyline as familiar as an old friend. Judging by the building’s placement, she was standing inside the Baxter Building, and that revelation had her stomach plummet down to her heels.

She needed to get out of there, but it was impossible when she couldn’t even stand on her two feet – and then she realized that she was wearing nothing but a blue hospital gown and a pair of boxers.

She wondered for a second who the hell had dressed her, before her thoughts were pulled back to more pressing matters like what day it was and who had gotten her here.

“You really shouldn’t be up,” said someone behind her, making her jump and almost fall as she let go of the window sill with one hand.

Two hands were immediately gripping her left elbow to help her stay up, and Hilly was surprised to look down and discover an extremely young version of Johnny Storm looking up at her with furrowed eyebrows.

And by extremely young, she meant that it was a child holding her up, and her cheeks colored in shame as she let go of the sill to cling back to her IV pole.

“Mom’ll be mad if she catches you up,” said the kid, smiling a little.

He had a dimple on the right cheek that reminded Hilly of Derek and she swallowed her saliva with difficulty at that, guilt and terror churning around her stomach at the thought of her boss who might be dead.

“How–” tried Hilly, her voice failing her halfway through the syllable. She cleared her throat and tried again: “How did I get here?”

“SHIELD called mom and she went to get you with uncle Johnny. It was pretty scary, I think your heart stopped beating twice during the first night.”

He blinked up with big blue eyes and she got a fleeting glimpse of what had happened. She vaguely recalled a softly rocking bed and eyes the same shade of blue trying to reassure her but she couldn’t be sure which Storm sibling it had been. Maybe none, and it had just been a hallucination.

“How long have I been here?” she managed to ask after a long minute of trying to figure it out.

“About a week and a half,” he replied, shrugging lightly.

“Alright,” she mumbled right before her leg gave out under her.

She heavily fell, the little boy not strong or fast enough to catch her, and her IV drip was pulled off her arm violently, drawing some blood and becoming another part of her body that hurt.

“Fuck,” she muttered, although she had managed to not get her left leg to take any damage, which was good because she knew what happened when she tried anything with that limb.

She wasn’t sure another syringe of highly experimental drug would be enough to get her up this time.

“Don’t worry, I’m gonna get someone to help you!” exclaimed the kid before running out of the room.

Hilly gritted her teeth and tried to get up, choosing to try her luck at getting out using the window rather than have one of the Fantastic Four have to carry her, but she managed to bump her left foot against the wall and the pain that flooded her took her breath away.

She passed out when she tried to move again after that.

  


  


***

  


  


Peter was sleeping on a chair next to her bed the next time she woke up and really, she shouldn’t have been surprised.

“Don’t try to run away again, please,” muttered Johnny from the chair on the other side of her bed, looking like he hadn’t slept in a week, “Franklin thought you were dead when we found you not moving on the floor, and he almost had a heart attack.”

“Who’s Franklin?” asked Hilly, feeling groggy and thirsty and everything dully aching – which wasn’t normal, she was pretty sure it should have hurt a lot more.

“My nephew. Don’t you remember? He says you woke up and talked to him.”

“I do remember,” she replied, reaching for the controller near her pillows to bring her bed up so she could sit up.

“You probably shouldn’t do that,” said Johnny, getting up but not doing any effort to stop her.

Hilly looked at the glass of water sitting on one of the bedside tables instead of paying attention to him, and he immediately grabbed it and a straw from the bedside’s drawer and helped her drink.

“Thanks,” she murmured after he had placed the glass back down and had leaned a hip against the bed, close enough that she could have touched him if she had raised her hand.

“It’s no problem,” he replied, looking down at the floor, lips pinched in a tight line.

A heavy silence settled over them after that. Hilly had absolutely nothing to say and no strength to talk anyway, and Johnny looked like talking was the absolute last thing he ever wanted to do, and apart from snoring softly, Peter wasn’t helping at all as he continued to sleep peacefully.

It was Johnny who broke it, not that Hilly was surprised.

“I’m sure you have a lot of questions,” he started without looking at her, “and we do too, but for now you really should rest. You...” he stopped to swallow with difficulty, and turned so his profile was to Hilly as he gazed out the window, “you almost died on your way here, and you almost did once you arrived. Several times and I… I can’t even...”

Peter made a soft noise in his sleep that had both Hilly and Johnny sharply turn to him, but he simply changed the awkward angle of his head and continued to sleep.

Still, that was enough to have Johnny stop speaking and leave the room hurriedly instead, leaving Hilly by herself to stare at her sleeping brother and wonder what the hell she was supposed to do now.

  


  


***

  


  


The next time she was awake a doctor and Peter marched into her room before she could try to get up again and both stood at the foot of her bed like two statues for a minute as Hilly resolutely kept her eyes turned to the doctor, not feeling brave enough to face her twin brother yet.

“I have good and bad news,” said the doctor after a moment, looking down at the files he was holding. “Good news is, while the drug that was still in your system when we found you _should_ have killed you and almost did, you survived it and there shouldn’t be any side effect. Bad news is uh...”

He stopped, ran a hand over the back of his neck as his eyes flickered up to Hilly before quickly glancing back down at the files.

“ _Some_ of the scarring on your body” – _a lot of the scarring then_ – “will not go away. Also uh, your leg… it’s uh...”

“I was here when they did this to my leg,” she snapped when he just paled and hunched his shoulders, “say it.”

“Recovery _is_ possible,” he said, “but it’ll be a long and very hard process, even with your super uh...”

“Healing factor?” tried Peter, and the doctor turned to him and nodded.

“Yes. Exactly. Even if you usually heal faster than most people, it will take some time.”

Hilly didn’t respond, and after a while of just shuffling around, the doctor finally got the message, excused himself and left.

It took Peter a full other minute of Hilly ignoring him before he finally left too.

  


  


***

  


  


She had surgery for her leg two days later and woke up afterwards without the horrible pain in the limb for the first time in months – which was such a surprise and a relief that she cried a little, feeling, for the first time since she had first woken up here, like things were maybe not going to be so terrible for her.

Franklin appeared into her room sometime before lunch, looking with round eyes at the cast that ran from her left hip, all the way down to her toes, and shyly asked if he could draw on it.

She only nodded because there was nothing else to keep her occupied. The television on the wall opposite her bed was off, there was no sign of a remote and with that cast on her leg she couldn’t get up again by herself so really, it was almost a relief when Franklin disappeared for all of two minutes from her room before reappearing with a lot of sharpies, and a small pile of outdated magazines that he handed to her without a single word before climbing in her bed next to her left hip and starting to draw.

She didn’t pay him any attention and only pretended to read the first magazine on the pile, opening it on a random page and staring unseeingly down at it, mind blank for a moment before her brain tried to make sense of everything that had happened to her those past few days.

Or weeks, maybe. Although to her it had only been a handful of very blurry days.

She hadn’t seen any of the Four since Johnny had abruptly left her room, and Peter hadn’t shown himself again either since that short conversation with the doctor, but she was pretty sure there were cameras somewhere and they all kept a very close watch on her.

Why wouldn’t they? As far as they knew she was a thief – and potentially a member of a nazi terrorist group. They were probably keeping her in that stupid hospital room just because she was too weak still, and as soon as she was able to walk again they’d put her in a cell, interrogate her, try to know what she knew and–

She shivered violently at her next thought and forced herself to not think about that, hands starting to shake at the memories that flooded her.

They were heroes, the good guys, they’d wouldn’t go to these length just to get information. Probably.

She was pretty sure Peter wouldn’t let them.

Still, she couldn’t stop shaking, and when she looked up at Franklin and what he was doing to her cast in a vein attempt to find something to take her mind off of it, she found Spiderman’s mask staring back at her with empty white eyes that had her stomach turn upside down.

“No,” she immediately choked, loud enough to have Franklin jump in surprise, leaving a long purple line on her cast next to whatever he was trying to draw now. He turned big, scared eyes towards her, not that she saw them because she couldn’t take her eyes away from Spidey’s ones. “Take it off!” she said, voice trembling in a panicked shrill, “Take it off!!” she said, louder, when all Franklin did was blink at her as his lower lip started to wobble.

“I– I’m sorry, what–”

“Take! It! Off!” she cut him before he could finish, breath coming in short pants as she used her arms to sit up, bringing her closer to the drawing. “I don’t want to see that, take it off right now!”

“I– I can’t,” murmured Franklin, his teary eyes never leaving her face. “I’m sorry I didn’t know...”

“Shut up!” screamed Hilly, definitely losing it as she violently grabbed the purple sharpie he was holding on to, not caring about the fact that he flinched and yelped in pain, and starting to crudely color over the drawn mask, breaking the tip of the sharpie only after two swipes of it.

She grunted in dismay, threw the sharpie away and grabbed another one, barely registering that Franklin, who was still trying to apologize, had also jumped off the bed and started to sob.

Hilly only realized that other people were here when someone loudly called her name and she reacted on instinct, throwing the sharpie like a knife at this person, who dodged and watched with horrified eyes as the sharpie, tip first, went straight through the wall.

“Hilly,” said Peter, a whisper this time, but she didn’t pay him any attention, grabbing a new sharpie instead and starting to color her cast once again, heart beating hard enough against her ribs that it hurt. “Hilly, please.”

“I need to take it off,” she replied, sounding hysterical even to her own ears as she pressed down too hard on the sharpie and broke it in two pieces, that she threw away without a care, deciding that taking the entire cast off would be more effective.

Someone violently grabbed her by the wrists and pinned her back on the bed just as she was grabbing the top part of the cast and preparing to rip it in half, and that was the final straw.

“No!” she yelled, because the last time they had held her like that was the time they had fucked up her leg, and she _couldn’t_ get through that again. No way.

She didn’t even feel it when she bent both knees, breaking her cast straight in half, and started kicking the person holding her down’s chest, growing more desperate after each kick that didn’t even make them move.

“Please,” she sobbed, throwing pride out of the window, “please not again, leave my legs, please! I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you everything!”

Someone near her face said something but she didn’t hear them, sobbing hysterically and loudly as she continued to kick the person above her, and she only grew more panicked when something stabbed her in the neck, trying to move her arms to no avail.

“Please Hilly!” said someone, but she didn’t catch the rest of the sentence, and when she turned her head to the right to look at whoever was speaking, she discovered that everything was blurry.

Limbs heavy, she finally stopped kicking and felt the iron grip around her wrists ease, but she felt too weak to get away.

“Kiddo,” rumbled the person over her, and when she turned her head again, this time to look up, she met large blue eyes surveying her through tears, “it’s okay, we don’t want to hurt you.”

“Derek’ll get me outta here,” she slurred, trying to glare and failing miserably as her eyes closed on their own accord. “He’ll get me out and I’ll kill you all, one after the other.”

The person replied something but she didn’t hear them, falling asleep before she could realize.

  


  


***

  


  


“You’ve seen what she looked like when we finally got to her, what exactly were you expecting?” hissed a voice somewhere to her left, near her feet.

“I wasn’t expecting her to try and kill us!” hissed a second voice, near her feet too, but on the other side of the bed. “Damn it Johnny, you’ve seen how she reacted when I held her down… we can’t do this, she needs the help of professionals.”

“And she’ll get it, but she’ll get it here, where she’s _safe_.”

Hilly doubted she was safer here than anywhere else. In fact, she’d felt better if she was somewhere far from this tower, Fantastic Four staying with her or not – not that she’d ever tell them, because then they would probably ask her why, and she really didn’t want to answer that.

The second person, who was obviously Ben Grimm, no one could imitate that voice, scoffed.

“You actually think it’s helping that we’re here? Wake up, Johnny, she doesn’t want us anywhere near her. Especially Peter.”

“How can you know that?!”

“Because if I was in her shoes I know this is how I’d feel. She’s just been through hell, and we both know that Peter’s relationship with her before that was _not_ the best,” _Understatement of the year_ , Hilly thought darkly, “so imagine what it must feel like for her to be forced into close proximity with him after everything that’s already happened to her!”

She couldn’t believe that it was Ben Grimm, out of everyone else in this damn tower, who got her.

“What am I supposed to do then?” spat Johnny. Hilly had to force herself to not move and continue to pretend sleeping when it sounded like he had taken one or two angry steps in Ben’s direction. “Am I supposed to tell Peter that it’d be better if he let his twin sister to our care and stay as far away from her as he can, because while he’s been searching for her for _months_ , thinking that the worst had happened – which isn’t very far from the truth – no one feels very comfortable having him so close to her because they were fighting before all that crap happened?”

“I don’t care what you tell or don’t tell him, we should leave her alone, that’s all.”

“No, we have to show her that we’re here for her, and to let her know that whatever happened before Hydra, we don’t hold anything against her.”

Her fingers twitched, she couldn’t help it.

Did they know?

“Boys,” came a third voice from what sounded like outside the room, Sue’s, “right now you both should leave her bedroom so she can properly rest. You’ll wake her up with all your screaming.”

Someone huffed, but there was the sound of feet shuffling on the floor, following by the sound of the door closing, and when Hilly opened her eyes a full minute later, she was alone in the room.

She didn’t know how to feel about what she had just heard, but at least she had an idea on where they stood about her pretending to steal from them.

  


  


***

  


  


After being left alone with a new cast for almost an entire week, Hilly was finally told by the doctor that she could now leave her bed and roll around the tower with a wheelchair if she wanted to.

“Really?” she asked, frowning as she watched Reed Richards, out of anyone else, walk in with a wheelchair and throw her a small polite smile.

“Yes,” replied the doctor, who had kept a very big respectful distance between the two of them every time he had come see her. “You will also be moved to a bedroom on another floor, one more comfortable than this one.”

“Okay.”

“Do you have any question?”

She had a lot, but just shook her head and accepted his help to get on the wheelchair, trying to keep her surprise off her face as Reed started to wheel her out and down a long corridor.

They reached an elevator in silence, stepped into it without the doctor, and off they were, going up by the looks of things. She wished she was surprised when they reached the penthouse – where the Four actually _lived_ – but it was predictable at this point, and she didn’t say anything as Reed wheeled her around to the bedroom opposite Ben Grimm’s.

It was the logical choice. He was the only one here strong enough to stop her, since Peter probably wouldn’t, and was scary enough to stop her from running away or doing something crazy.

He was also on her side, if what she had heard was true, and that strangely put her at ease.

The bedroom was pretty bare. It had floor to ceiling windows on one wall, a walk in closet on the opposite wall, creamy plush carpet on the floor, white paint on the walls, a door probably leading to a bathroom, and not much for furniture, just the usual desk, chair, two bedside tables and one gigantic bed.

On the bed was the bag she had left here in Johnny’s care all this time ago.

She struggled with the wheelchair for about two seconds before managing to wheel herself to the bed, grab the bag and inspect its content, surprised to see that nothing looked like it had been disturbed. She took the red hoodie out of it and put it over her hospital-issued like pajamas, already feeling slightly better – but then again, she had always been sentimental over stupid things like stolen pieces of clothing.

When she put the bag back down on the bed and turned the wheelchair around to face Reed, she discovered a tiny frown on his face that he smoothed out just as she was meeting his eyes.

“You already know where the kitchen and living-room are,” he said, his small polite smile from before back in place, “but if you have any question, don’t hesitate to come to me or the others. We’re all here for you.”

She doubted it.

“I’ll leave you now, I have work to do.” He added after a full half-minute of silence, before bolting out of the room and closing the door behind him, leaving Hilly by herself to wonder what the hell was going to happen to her now.

  


  


***

  


  


She stayed in the bedroom by herself for an entire day before getting too hungry and being forced to get out and join the kitchen.

She timed it well, choosing to get out at precisely eleven at night. She knew Peter would be out patrolling and the others would either still be working in the lab or off to bed, so her chances of meeting anyone were minimal – and she was happy to find that she was right. No one was watching TV in the living-room, no one was lingering at the breakfast bar and no one was making a sandwich in the kitchen.

Her relief was short-lived though, because as soon as she took slices of turkey and other ingredients that seemed good for a sandwich out of the fridge, she realized that the kitchen hadn’t been thought for people on a wheelchair with their cast preventing any lower body movement, and there was no way she was getting the bread from where it was smugly staring back at her on top of the fridge.

Sighing, she wondered for a second if she would be able to sit back down on the wheelchair without falling on her ass if she used her superpowers to stick to the fridge and get up with upper body strength alone, but was saved from having to attempt it by someone turning the light on and stepping into the kitchen while clearing their throat.

“Hey, nice seeing you out and about,” said Johnny, offering her an awkward smile in the process of joining her.

She turned back to the bread and he cleared his throat again, following her gaze.

“Oh, sorry about that, we didn’t think...” He didn’t finish his sentence, brushing past her to grab it and put it down on the closest counter, which was still too high for her. “Um...” He blushed, and hesitantly reached for the ingredients she was still holding, taking great care of never letting his fingers brush against her. “You want a sandwich, right? I’ll make it for you.”

She said nothing and watched him wash his hands and grab a knife before getting to work, repeating to herself again and again that he wasn’t going to hurt her. No one in this penthouse would. They were the good guys, they had no reason to do so, and Peter wouldn’t let them – of that, she was absolutely certain.

Peter wouldn’t let anyone hurt her, except himself. He would hurt her again and again, like he had already done, but never the same way Hydra had hurt her. The only reason her twin could cause her so much pain was because she cared about him, loved him, and she knew, deep down, that the same could be said of him. Deep down, he loved her still.

She snapped out of her thought when a sandwich appeared right in front of her eyes. Looking up, she discovered Johnny leaning a hip against the counter, giving her a hesitant half-smile that almost made sympathy wash over her, but she was still too numb from months of torture, and simply accepted the food with a nod, keeping her eyes down as she bit down on the sandwich.

“I hope you like it,” said Johnny after her third bite, just to fill the silence, “I’m not the greatest cook ever but I can manage, although I make a mean mac and cheese. I could make some for you tomorrow if you’d like. Unless you don’t like it? But I guess everyone likes mac and cheese, not liking it would be _weird_. Unless you really don’t? In which case it’s fine, I can make something else, it’s fine.”

She handed him the half eaten sandwich back instead of replying, already feeling full, and slowly maneuvered the wheelchair around him so she could go back to her bedroom.

“That’s the plan then?” he called after her, “Mac and cheese tomorrow?”

He didn’t get a reply.

  


  


***

  


  


The next morning, after a particularly bad nightmare, she decided to reach out to someone she trusted and actually wanted to speak to: Wade. He was her best and only friend and even more, had been in the know about her plan the entire time and, quite frankly, she missed him terribly. When she hadn’t been thinking about her family to hold on those past few months, her mind had always drifted to him.

Knowing him, he was more than probably looking for her – because it was _Wade_ , and he’d never accept that she was dead until he had a body in front of his eyes – and she could only hope that he was in New York and in walking distance from the Baxter Building. He would know what to say to her, and she wanted to tell him about what had happened, because she genuinely trusted him and felt safe in his presence, and more than anything, she knew he’d help her get out of here.

Hell, he’d probably bridal-carry her back to his apartment if he had the chance.

Still, that didn’t stop her from staring for way too long at the landline phone on one of the bedside tables and hesitate before grabbing the receiver and starting to dial his number with a shaky hand.

She listened to the dial tone, feeling more anxious after each one, and just as she was ready to abandon, call it a stupid idea and hang up, a deep voice said “Hello?” into her ear, sending her heart into frenzied beats.

“Wade?” she asked, feeling hopeful for the first time in _months_.

“Nah, it’s Shaun, you’ve got the wrong the number.”

Frowning, Hilly repeated the number she had dialed to him, which he agreed was his number, but he didn’t know any Wade so sorry, have a good day, and she stayed right where she was, with the receiver pressed to her ear and the dialing tone resonating with fatality into her ear for a moment.

“I can’t fucking believe it,” she muttered before abruptly hanging up too, putting the receiver down hard enough that the plastic cracked, but she didn’t pay any attention to that, grabbing the wheels of her wheelchair and turning around instead, gritting her teeth in frustration.

She reached her bedroom’s door and opened it with difficulty still, only to come face to face with Ben Grimm, who was getting out of his bedroom too and looked at her like a deer caught in headlights for a second before rearranging in rocky face into something more neutral.

“What’s up, kiddo?” he asked with a nod, finishing to close his bedroom’s door behind him and fully stepping into the hallway. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“I need to speak to the agent who called you to come and get me,” she said instead of replying to what he had just said.

He looked confused for a second, before nodding. “Alright. Need something else?”

“Johnny said he’d make me mac and cheese.”

Ben scoffed.

“Of course he’d say that. I think he’s in the kitchen right now, if you want to go ask him.”

She shook her head and wheeled back against the door.

“Right… How about I go bother him so he makes you some, and then I bring it back to you?”

“Okay.”

He nodded and left immediately while Hilly rolled back into her bedroom and wondered what the hell she was going to do now, without Wade.

  


  


***

  


  


Three weeks later, a cast-free Hilly walked out of a particularly brutal physical therapy session, still struggling with her brand new pair of clutches that were, nonetheless, an improvement from the wheelchair, and arrived into the living room to find the entire Fantastic Four team, minus Reed, along with an anxious looking Peter and a man in a black suit.

“Agent Coulson,” he immediately said, getting up from the couch and crossing the space between them to shake her hand, addressing her a polite smile, “I was part of the team who retrieved you.”

She gave him a polite nod before going straight to business.

“Is Derek still alive?”

“Yes. He explained to us what you had to do so he could stay in cover, and while I won’t lie to you and admit that he was severely harmed by that, he’s still alive and has already recovered.”

A weight she hadn’t even known was pressing down on her shoulders and chest seemed to lift and she felt herself giving him the closest thing to a smile she could manage.

“Thank you,” she said, meaning it.

“No, thank _you_ , Agent Parker. While he couldn’t give me much details, agent Lawson told me what you did to protect the intel you had. The world owes you a lot.”

She shrugged instead of replying, feeling the eyes of all the superheroes in the room burning on her skin.

“What about Agent Charlize Jameson? She was on the Hellicarrier too when it happened.”

He shook his head and Hilly felt like part of the floor under her feet was crumbling.

“We don’t know what happened to her. She wasn’t found in the Hellicarrier’s wreckage, and we haven’t heard from her since.”

“She’s on our side,” she felt the need to add.

“We know that, and I promise to inform you as soon as we hear about her.”

She nodded, feeling a little lost.

“Agent Lawson also told me about you asset that day, who helped you plan and execute everything.”

Wade, he was talking about _Wade_ , she realized, meeting his eyes and feeling her pulse quicken, nodding almost eagerly.

“Do you know where he is?”

“Unfortunately no,” replied Agent Coulson, “but the last time we had a lead on him, he was close to finding you.”

She blinked, the permanent weight in her stomach climbing up her throat, making something burn at the back of her eyelids.

He had almost found her.

She wasn’t sure what to do and how to live with that.

“Please, can you...”

“Give you a call next time we hear something?” he finished for her when she trailed off, a tiny sympathetic smile curling the corner of his mouth, “Of course, Agent Parker. Was that all?”

She nodded, at a loss of words, and shook his hand when he reached for her before he was saluting the superheroes and leaving.

Everyone stared at her for a full minute in silence after he left and she refused to speak first.

“So you really are a SHIELD agent, huh?” asked Johnny after a while.

“Leave her alone,” muttered Peter when she turned to glare at the blond.

The twins’ eyes met and for the first time since she had woken up here, Hilly considered walking to him and wrapping her arms around his skinny frame to squeeze the breath out of him until she was sure he wasn’t going to go anywhere.

Instead, Peter abruptly turned around and left the room in long strides.

“You two really need to talk,” sighed Sue, before following him at a much slower pace.

Hilly decided to ignore her and sit down on the couch, her leg hurting too much for her to pay attention to this nonsense.

Ben, who was sitting next to her, patted her shoulder like they were friends.

“It’s fine, they’ll get over it,” he said, making Johnny scoff loudly and leave too.

  


  


***

  


  


Hilly waited until the terrible clutches were gone before starting to plan her escape. She had already been staying at the Baxter Building for three months, and it seemed like an eternity compared to how fast she usually healed, and while she could now walk by herself without any assistance, she still had a limp that prevented her from going faster than an old woman with hip problems and she couldn’t deal with stairs at all.

Still, she estimated that she would be able to at least jog in three to four weeks, and would leave then, which meant that she better start working on her escape plan right away, if she wanted to have a chance at escaping at all.

Johnny, Ben and Peter had spent more and more time watching over her as the number of days since her last public mental breakdown grew bigger. She wasn’t really sure what to think about that, except that it made planning and dealing with her issues in peace harder, and while they didn’t directly ask her about her time with Hydra, they were getting less and less shy with asking about her time with SHIELD.

Fortunately, no one had asked her about what she had done at Avengers Tower and here before being captured yet.

“Were you sent on a lot of ops?” asked Johnny, looking at her over his shoulder for a second before he was focusing back on whatever it was that he was cooking.

Hilly didn’t answer, because quite frankly she didn’t know herself what constituted “a lot”, but Johnny didn’t seem bothered by it at all and continued his prodding.

“Did you have a team?”

This time, when he turned to look at her, she nodded and pretended to not see him and Peter exchange a look.

Her twin had been sitting on the other side of the breakfast bar in silence, pouring over a scientific revue and hadn’t seemed to be listening to what Johnny was saying up until then.

“Really?” asked Johnny, his tone changing slightly to a more interested one, turning back to his food again, but Hilly knew that she had his full attention, “how many of you were there?”

“Three,” she replied, staring holes into Johnny’s back as Peter looked up at her profile.

“Derek and Charlize, uh?” pressed Johnny.

Hilly didn’t reply – she didn’t need to.

“How did you get to work for SHIELD anyway?” continued the blond after a moment of silence. “Do they have a website where you can apply?”

“They came to me,” she said, for once not hesitating to reply, “back when I was still Spiderman. They knew there were two of us, and after I lost the right to be Spidey they came again, and I said yes this time.”

“Hilly...” murmured Peter, but she refused to turn to him, preferring to look down at the countertop instead as Johnny turned to her too, “I am so sorry, it’s all my fault I...” he trailed off and she could see from the corner of her eye that he was biting down on his lip.

She had thought, before, that hearing those words would have made her feel better.

She had been wrong.

“I survived, didn’t I? I had other people helping me when I needed them, it’s all that matters.”

“I should have been here for you, I should have–”

“Not left me for dead, yes,” she cut him off, finally looking up at him, teeth gritted. “You should have listened to me when I told you I could still be Spidey. You should have trusted me, for once in your life. And more importantly, you shouldn’t have thrown me at the shark in order to save your girlfriend and then put all the blame on me.”

He looked away in shame but Hilly wasn’t done.

“You weren’t there Peter. All the times I needed you, you weren’t there, and while I could excuse it right after Gwen’s death, I had to see the reality of things after a point. You knew you could count on me when you needed me, and the rest didn’t matter. I would be dead ten times over if it weren’t for Deadpool, and the only times you expressed concern was when it was televised or you considered being Spidey again, but guess what? After becoming SHIELD, I didn’t need you anymore. I had a team and dozens of people ready to help me at any moment, and SHIELD _taught_ me how to not need anyone, so you can take your apology and shove it, because this is the last thing I need right now.”

And with that she got up and left the kitchen, feeling shaky.

  


  


***

  


  


Franklin came to her room that very night while she was pretending to sleep instead of having flashbacks and he sat down at the foot or her bed in silence, just watching her for a while.

“Daddy said bad things happened to you.”

“Daddy’s right,” replied Hilly, massaging a pain in her left leg that had been gone for a while now and pushing her hair out of her face with her other hand. “Why are you here?”

“I wanted to say that I’m not mad at you for the other day… I know sometimes after a nightmare we can’t tell who’s the good and bad guys.”

It was one way to look at it.

“It’s fine,” she sighed when he just looked at her with big innocent eyes, “I would understand if you didn’t want to see me after that, and I’m sorry. I was probably a little violent and scared you.”

He shrugged a shoulder.

“You looked like you were scared too, and everyone is scared for you.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” he said, nodding eagerly, “they’re always discussing how to help you when they think I’m not around or listening, and Peter and Uncle Johnny even had a fight about it this afternoon.”

Hilly nodded, telling herself that she _really_ needed to get the hell out of here asap, because she couldn’t take this family breaking apart because of her. She didn’t think her relationship with Peter was in any way salvageable, not after what she had done, and she was pretty sure they were going to ask the questions she didn’t want to answer as soon as she got back to 100% healthy physically. There was nothing here for her, and she had to make sure Charlize and Derek were fine.

She also needed to find Wade, but for some reason thinking about it hurt a lot, so she put it at the bottom of her to-do list for now – especially since she was pretty sure Wade would be the one to find her this time.

“I hope the fight wasn’t too bad,” she said when it was clear Franklin was waiting for some sort of answer.

“Peter was crying a lot when I stopped eavesdropping.”

It wasn’t good.

Despite appearances and what she tried to tell herself, Hilly cared about him maybe a little too much for her own good and the last thing she wanted was to hurt him bad enough that he would cry. She had been hard on him, yes, but that fight was old. It had started the night she had gotten her powers, and there was no reason for him to take it that way now when she had told him worse things before.

But then again, she had never been kidnapped by nazis and missing for months before – and just like that, Hilly realized that she was an absolute dumbass.

If it had been Peter instead of her, she would have _lost_ it. She would have stormed _every single base she could have come across_ until she found him, and nothing but a bullet in the head could have stopped her.

He had left her alone since she had woken up, all things considered, and it couldn’t have been easy for him, especially considering that he _knew_ about the terrible things Hydra had done to her.

She should cut her twin some slack.

It still didn’t change the fact that she was going to leave without telling him – he’d never let her go and she wasn’t about to physically fight him over that.

“You should go to sleep,” she told Franklin after a while.

He shrugged a shoulder and pouted, so she internally sighed and lifted the sheets and covers and patted the mattress next to her.

He smiled and joined her in a second, laying close enough that she could feel his warmth without touching him, and in a moment he was asleep, his soft and slow breathing the only sound in the room.

It was weird, to have a child she didn’t even know sleep in her bed, but his presence was reassuring and helped her relax enough that she drifted off.

  


  


***

  


  


“Look, I’m sorry,” said Hilly the very next morning.

Peter, who was only wearing a pair of boxers that probably were Johnny’s, only blinked blearily and ran a hand through his mess of bed hair, looking confused.

“What?”

“I shouldn’t have said what I said yesterday, it was wrong and mean of me, and I want you to know that I don’t blame you for what happened. It was Hydra’s fault, you had no play in it.”

“You’d still be a superhero if it wasn’t for me…”

“I wouldn’t have superpowers if it wasn’t for you, but you didn’t force me to walk into that room full of spiders, just like you didn’t actually force me to become a SHIELD agent, and I really need you to know that I _don’t_ blame _you_ for what happened those past few months. It’s on Hydra. Not you.”

There were tears in Peter’s eyes, and she knew what he was going to do even before he took a step up, raised his arms and asked with a shaky voice if he could hug her.

She nodded, not sure she could speak without having her voice breaking too, and wrapped her arms around him as soon as he hugged her. Closing her eyes and letting her head rest on his shoulder, she breathed in his familiar scent, committed to memory the way it felt so natural to hug him and have him close, and promised herself to not make him cry again because she was being cruel.

“I love you,” he murmured softly against the crown of her head as he squeezed her tighter.

She squeezed him right back.

“I love you too.”

  


  


***

  


  


She left exactly two weeks later.

It was a little early and she still limped pretty badly, but she couldn’t take it anymore.

Peter spent all of his time looking at her with this heartbroken expression that twisted her heart in knots and the Fantastic Four acted like they were slowly but surely adopting her, and it was just _too much_.

Her plan wasn’t so much one. She just saw an opportunity that day that came in the form of Victor Von Doom attacking the city and driving everyone out of the building to save the day, and took it.

She still wanted to have time when they came back, so she first got to her camera free bedroom, slipped the red hoodie on, put the gun she had hidden in the bag she had left here in the waist of her jeans and climbed into the vent.

Crawling was easier than walking now that her leg was all fucked up, and she managed to arrive on the roof a lot quicker than she had been expecting.

Another thing that she hadn’t been expecting was for Ben Grimm to already be there, waiting for her.

“You’re smart,” he said with a shrug when she approached. “I knew you’d take the first opportunity that came.”

“Are you going to stop me?”

“Not at all,” he replied, shaking his head. “I actually think it’d be good for you to get away from here. I’m here to help.”

Hilly frowned, not believing him.

“I knew you’d try the roof, since everyone is keeping an eye on the lower floors, but to be honest I don’t know what you were planning to do once there.”

“Me either, but I’m good at winging it.”

Ben snorted, took a step closer and held his hand out to her.

There was a web-shooter in his palm.

“You stole from my brother?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“He lost it between the couch’s cushions, and it’s for a good cause.”

“Damn right it is,” she replied before snatching it out of his hand and putting it around her left wrist.

“I also want you to know that if you ever need something, you can come to me.”

Hilly nodded. “Thanks, I… I don’t know what I would have done without you, and I’m not only talking about today. Staying here wasn’t so bad thanks to you.”

“You’re welcome,” he replied with a nod before starting to walk away from her and in the direction of the door leading to the penthouse.

She watched him go and waited for a full minute, alone with the wind, the sound of New York’s busy streets not reaching her, before limping to the edge of the rooftop.

Jumping off buildings and swinging through the city, she had realized a long time, was kind of like riding a bike. Once you did it correctly one time, you could never forget how to do it – so she jumped, and did not look back.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave me a comment, please?


End file.
